Sunday, 17 March 2013

Second Life Updates

In the days when I was new to the metaverse, it was unusual
for a week to go by without some sort of blog update from Linden on the Second
Life® home page. In recent times, this frequency of communication seems to have
dropped considerably. There were just nine posts made in the whole of 2012. Without
wanting to sound like I’m jumping on the The End Is Nigh bandwagon, it is
tempting to ascribe this to the general decay of SL commented on in so many
places these days. It is, after all, a decay that can be seen in many places. Last
week, I flew down from my skybox and took a look around some of the mainland
sims surrounding the region I’ve lived in since 2007 and was staggered at the
amount of abandoned land I found. It was like walking across a wasteland:
parched, undulating ground stretching off in all directions, almost as far as I
could see. All it needed was a piece of tumbleweed bouncing past or a
post-apocalyptic, skeletal hand reaching out of the burned soil towards the scorched,
tear-stained sky.

But wait. 2013 seems to have got off to a much more talkative
start, with seven posts made in January alone. Does this denote a new direction
for Linden’s communications policy? As we enter the final six months leading up
to SL’s tenth birthday and the potential associated media attention, is Linden
stepping up its Be Friendly Towards Residents campaign? My curiosity piqued, I
decided to take a look at what topics our governors have deemed fit for
discussion with us.

The first was the announcement that SL is now available to
purchase as a product from amazon.com. Yes. It’s listed under the ‘Video Games’
section of the website, in fact (and let’s not get into the ‘it’s not a game’
debate right now; no matter how right you are, the people you’re making the
point to will always regard anything that moves on a computer screen and isn’t
a video of an amusing cat on YouTube as a game; in any case, there isn’t a
section at Amazon for ‘Metaverses and Virtual Worlds’ so where do you suggest
they put it? ‘Patio, Lawn & Garden’?). As well as the basic free download,
you can also acquire various inventory ‘packs’ for sums of actual money. The
‘Premium Vehicle Pack’ bundles a sailing boat, a dune buggy and a hoverboard
with L$4,000 for the real world price of $24.95, whilst the ‘Deluxe Vehicle
Pack’, retailing at $14.95, contains only the hoverboard, sailing boat and
L$2,000. I suppose the best way to think about these things is as SL gift
vouchers, only ones which cost more than the value of the cash they come with
and which have thrown in a couple of novelty items you might use if you’re a
newbie for as long as it takes you to discover the experience of crossing a sim
border.

Speaking as someone who’s neither
seen nor stepped upon a hoverboard in SL, I’m struggling to accept this as the
hitherto undiscovered hook that’s going to reel in metaverse newcomers by the
million, yet the ‘Starter Vehicle Pack’ ($9.95) contains just this item and a
mere L$1,000. Yes: out of all three vehicles created for this stunning new
marketing tool, the one that Linden thinks people are most likely to buy by
itself is the one that doesn’t actually exist in the real world, which can’t
take any passengers, which is difficult to see and aesthetically appreciate
when it’s being used and – let’s be honest – which is most likely to annoy
other people. What’s more, the ‘Hoverboard Bonus Pack’ contains only hoverboard extras – no lindens
whatsoever – and costs $12.95! I rarely use exclamation marks in non-fiction,
but this surely merits a minimum of three (you should be respecting me for my
restraint). But if you think I’m against the idea of Amazon SL packs then
you’re wrong. In fact, I intend to dedicate next month’s column to an analysis
of the virtual bundles we might actually find enticing.

Returning to the list of Linden January
blog posts, two of these concern the all-new ‘Quicktips’ video tutorials
prepared by Linden for newbies. The first is a one minute introduction to
avatar appearance, the second a guide to buying and unpacking items. Naturally,
the latter cannot possibly fit into a minute and spends instead a second under
three trying to make the various caveats to SL shopping (items bought should
appear in your received items folder… except they might come in a box… and boxes
need to be rezzed on land to be unpacked… oh, but not all land can be rezzed
on… you need a sandbox (no explanation is given as to what a sandbox is)… click
on the box to unpack it… oh wait, some boxes don’t unpack automatically…) sound
easy. All credit to the narrator – who sounds suspiciously like Torley Linden –
for resisting the urge to scream hysterically, Why are sellers STILL packing items into boxes and not even providing
land to unpack them on? Then again,
it does rather sound like he’s reading from a pre-prepared script, possibly
with a gun to his head.

Another of the blog posts concerns
interesting developments in the SL use of the Leap Motion controller, an as yet
to be released controller device that reads real life movement in a manner presumably
not all that different from Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect. A video clip embedded in
the post demonstrates the use of the device to control with hand movements the
movement of an avatar, the positioning and sizing of objects (because we’re all
still building stuff out of prims), and the activation of gestures. Regular readers
of my column will know I see a healthy future for real life movement metaverse
interface; at the same time, anything which makes it any easier for people to
unleash those twenty-something lines of ASCII spam across my screen or
pre-recorded, not-even-funny-in-the-context-of-the-original-movie sound clips
must carry with it the threat of the death penalty. So be warned, developers.
Be warned.

Last of all, Linden’s started
posting on its blog highlights from its Destination Guide – a handful of
destinations per blog post with a picture and a paragraph each to whet your
exploration appetite. The most recent of these was themed around new art
installations. It’s been a while since I looked at some SL art and I was in the
mood for something to cheer me up from the wastelands below my skybox, so I
picked a couple of these – Citysphere and Bryn Oh’s sim-sized ‘Imogen and the
Pigeons’ and jumped into the teleport.

Citysphere is a large sphere covered
in skyscrapers that you can walk around as though it’s a small planet; sort of
an SL ecumenopolis that – apparently – gets three times the land space of a sim
onto its surface area, although the buildings have no actual function. Sticking
to the ground as you walk around the miniature Trantor is achieved by means of
a special sit script that enables you to walk normally whilst everything slowly
turns upside down. It’s more than a little disorientating to see your avatar
dangling from the ceiling – by which I mean ground – and I couldn’t decide
whether a reorientation script hadn’t been included a) because the artist didn’t
know how to write one or b) because however irritating, dizzying and nauseating
it might have been, the effect is a powerful reminder that we’re all of us
upside-down to somebody. I’m guessing now probably (b). It is art, after all.

And then there’s ‘Imogen and the
Pigeons’, which deposits the arriving visitor in a wasteland not entirely
dissimilar to my local SL neighbourhood, except with added cooling towers. Wound around one of them, a thin spiral
staircase (watch your step, there’s no railing) is one route up to the hundred
metre high entrance to the main exhibit; a set of fallen blocks that arrange
themselves into a staircase as you step on them (but turn the wrong way and
they all fall back to the ground) is a second; a whirly chair for the can’t-be-arsed-with-precision-movement
avatars like yours truly is a third and if you’re really lazy there’s a teleport ball in the middle cooling tower
that’ll take you straight there. Thus, you arrive at the reception to the Therapist’s
office, one of many narrative signs informing you: An unfortunate space / that the printers missed, / changed the
psychologist’s plaque / to read “The rapist” / Sadly the mistake / was not far
from true, / as the therapist had / destroyed a mind or two. That sort of
therapist, then. In the office, we discover him examining his dead butterfly
collection, each insect labelled with the name of one of his patients, except
the butterfly for Imogen is missing. He
was the type of man / who felt he saw much clearer / from the darkened side /
of a one-way mirror. A few locations later, we find Imogen in bed in her
room in the hospital and gazing out of the window at her free friends, the
pigeons, gathered together on the telephone wire. On the sill, Imogen’s still
alive butterfly flaps its wings in a glass jar and clicking this takes you to
an online video clip of Bryn releasing a newly metamorphosed butterfly into the
sky. ‘Imogen and the Pigeons’ is
absolutely packed with puzzles and detail that I couldn’t even begin to
describe here. What began as an intended five minute excursion ended up as a
full hour exploring the various nooks and crannies of this enormous exhibit,
and even then I left feeling I’d only scratched the surface. You could very
easily spend a whole day exploring it. It is immense.

I’m glad that Linden appear to have
decided we’re worth talking to again. ‘Imogen and the Pigeons’ was also the
perfect antidote to all that nothingness now surrounding my home and the vague
worry that SL has lost its ability to move and inspire me. Of course, the plus
side of being surrounded by wasteland where I live is I could have a lot of fun
racing around down there in some sort of buggy. Aha. Suddenly, the Amazon
Premium Vehicle pack makes sense…